QUICK SELECT
INTO THE SHADOWS
Dir: Andrew ScaTrano, Aust., 2009, 90 mins, digibeta, (unclassified 18+)
The end of an era for Canberra screen culture – the closure of the Electric Shadows cinema in 2006 – is a discussion starter on the wider problem of making and getting Australian independent cinema out to audiences. George Miller, Nash Edgerton, Robert Connelly, Rolf de Heer and Andrew Pike) offer their views about our cinema’s crisis of relevance.
WAKE IN FRIGHT
Dir: Ted Kotcheff, UK/USA/Aust., 1971, 109 mins, 35mm (M)
For many, it's the greatest Australian film ever made. At the very least, it's a high-point of the Australian film industry revival of the early 1970s. In director Ted Kotcheff's hands Kenneth Cook's savage novel becomes a sweat-blurred cinematic vision of savage Australian masculinity, as bush school teacher John Grant (Gary Bond) is trapped by the turn of a two-up coin in the outback mining city of Bundanyabba. All John wants to do is get to Sydney and the arms of his girlfriend. But led on by the local copper (Chips Rafferty in his las role) and his other new best mates (including Jack Thompson and Donald Pleasance) the 'Yabba becomes an inescapable, self-made hell of beer, dust and violence.
LOUISE-MICHEL
Dir: Benoît Delépine, Gustave de Kervern, France, 2008, 94 mins, 35mm, (M)
Gruff Louise works in a toy factory, except that female co-workers and even her apron name-tag call her ‘Jean-Pierre’. When the girls’ lose their jobs to a factory in China, she’s the first to suggest they pool their pay-out and assassinate the boss. They hire Michel, who used to be a miserable fat girl, but who now has delusions of being an International Man of Mystery… Excusez-moi? There’s no real point in going and figuring this crazy hit comedy; directors Delépine and de Kervern – the team behind the deeply subversive French TV comedy Groland – are as much Johnny Rotten as Jacques Tati. Canberra Premiere.
LA DOLCE VITA
Dir: Federico Fellini, Italy, 1960, 174 mins, 35mm, (M)
“By 1965 there’ll be total depravity…” So one of the cavalcade of Felliniesque characters remarks, in the Maestro’s gaze into the future of the 1960s and the chances for happiness for Rome’s indifferent chatting classes. Marcello Mastroianni plays a character not much different than his real-life self: a hack celebrity journalist vaguely pursuing a visiting movie star (Anita Ekberg, in that fountain), vaguely pursued by an equally bored socialite and descending into moral crisis when an admired friend destroys himself in a murder-suicide. At the end only a little girl on a beach seems to offer any hope. “Thomas Mann meets Eurotrash.” – David Thomson.
LOUISE-MICHEL
Dir: Benoît Delépine, Gustave de Kervern, France, 2008, 94 mins, 35mm, (M)
Gruff Louise works in a toy factory, except that female co-workers and even her apron name-tag call her ‘Jean-Pierre’. When the girls’ lose their jobs to a factory in China, she’s the first to suggest they pool their pay-out and assassinate the boss. They hire Michel, who used to be a miserable fat girl, but who now has delusions of being an International Man of Mystery… Excusez-moi? There’s no real point in going and figuring this crazy hit comedy; directors Delépine and de Kervern – the team behind the deeply subversive French TV comedy Groland – are as much Johnny Rotten as Jacques Tati. Canberra Premiere.
THE DREAMERS
(Sang Pemimpi) Dir: Riri Riza, Indonesia, 2009, tbc mins, 35mm, (unclassified 18+)
Riza and producer Mira Lesmana’s sequel to their Indonesian box office hit The Rainbow Troops is again based on Andrea Hirata’s immensely popular novels about childhood in the remote Sumatran island of Belitung. The new film carries the story forward to high school days in the 1980s, as Ikal, Arai and Jimbon, all now teens, struggle with love and the passage to manhood. “We want to show how these teenagers stick with their dreams and fight against poverty, traditional values and actually make their dreams come true…” – Riri Riza. Riri Riza and producer Mira Lesmana will introduce this Australian premiere screening.
OPERA JAWA
Dir: Garin Nugroho, Indonesia/Austria, 2006, 120 mins, 35mm, (unclassified 18+)
One of seven films commissioned by festival guru Peter Sellars to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth, Indonesian director Garin Nugroho retells the ancient Sanskrit epic of Ramayana as a sensual Javanese tale of the love of two village potters fractured by the allure of power. Nugroho’s film combines the traditional and modernist in a blindingly colourful fusion of Gamelan melodies, Javanese shadow puppetry and traditional dance (by one of Madonna’s collaborators Eko Supriyanto), brought together with the sculpture and performance art of contemporary Yogyakarta. Garin Nugroho will introduce this Canberra premiere screening.
TALENTIME
Dir: Yasmin Ahmad, Malaysia, 2009, 119 mins, 35mm (unclassified 15+)
As teachers and students rush to pull a high school talent contest together, nothing seems like it will be right on the night. Except maybe the teen romance that’s budding between the deaf-mute son of a strict Indian widow and the contest’s rising talent, the gentle daughter of a big-hearted and slightly zany Muslim family. Does a Malaysian cross between Romeo and Juliet and High School Musical sound a little cheesy? Well, in the delicate hands of the great director Yasmin Ahmad, the rom-com starts off as tender and funny, but builds into a deeply moving call for reconciliation between the diverse communities that make up a modern multi-cultural Asian society. The Malaysian box office hit of 2009 will have its Canberra premiere screening in honour of director Ahmad, who passed away soon after the film’s completion.
A POET
(Puisi Tak Terkuburkan) Dir: Garin Nugroho, Indonesia, 1996, 83 mins, video, (unclassified 18+)
Shot on video in seven days, Nugroho’s work is still one of the few Indonesian films to confront Indonesia’s own ‘killing fields’ of 1965. Famous Aceh poet Ibrahim Kadir plays himself in the film, using the ‘Didong’ style of traditional Acehnese poetic ballad to express the trauma of the thousands of Acehnese (and another estimated 500,000 plus across Indonesia) who were detained and murdered as suspected ‘Communists’ by Indonesian military.
AGRARIAN UTOPIA
(Sawan baan na) Dir: Uruphong Raksasad, Thailand, 2009, 120 mins, (unclassified 18+)
Uruphong Raksasad gave up mainstream filmmaking to return to his North Thai rural roots, and a new career in the hybrid docudrama form. For his new work, Uruphong rented a local rice paddy and convinced two local families to work on the land with him over a number of seasons, meanwhile also building a relationship with a former sociologist gone back-to-nature and his own eccentric agricultural methods. The result is a hauntingly beautiful testament to a passing way of living off and with the land, and the winner of the UNESCO prize at the 2009 Asia- Pacific film awards. Uruphong Raksasad will introduce this Canberra premiere screening.
THE SCREEN AT KAMCHANOD
(Pee Chang Nang) Dir: Songsak Mongkolthong, Thailand, 2007, 97 mins, 35mm, (unclassified 18+)
In 1987, an outdoor movie screening in rural Thailand was reportedly attended by spirits, who emerged from the forest to watch and then suddenly disappeared. From this urban myth, director Mongkolthong has fashioned one of the most chilling hits of recent Thai horror cinema, resetting the story to a team of investigators who borrow the film print and a deserted Bangkok cinema to look for the truth – and find their screening being invaded by invisible patrons who just love to put their feet up on the seats! Canberra Premiere.
AT THE END OF DAYBREAK
(Sham moh) Dir: HoYuhang, South Korea/ Hong Kong/ Malaysia, 2009, 94 mins, 35mm, (unclassified 18+)
In a story that could be by S.E. Hinton or filmed by Nick Ray, working-class boy Chai loves middle-class schoolgirl Ying even more than his motorcycle. But he’s 23 and she’s 15. When they are found out, her greedy parents plot to blackmail his struggling alcoholic mother (a surprising bit of off-casting for HK action heroine Kara Hui) to pay for their childrens’ Australian university tuition. HoYuhang (Rain Dogs) is the master of a new sort of Malaysian neo-noir, using its gleam and style to comment on the class, gender and race relationships of a complex modern Asian society. Australian Premiere.
ADRIFT
(Choi voi) Dir: Bui Thac Chuyn, Vietnam, 2009, 102 mins, 35mm, (unclassified 18+)
Naïve middle-class bride Duyen marries taxi driver Hai for his good-looks and stable income. But Hai quickly retreats from the marital bed to his mother’s cooking, leaving Duyen to the consolation of writer friend Cam and her circle of western-lifestyle hedonists. This is a tale from modern Hanoi City that surprises in its sensuality, Art movie production design and erotic power. “After all the lean years in which Vietnamese cinema was kept alive by émigrés… here at last… a home-grown movie to compare with the best in current East-Asian cinema.” – Shelly Kraicer. Australian premiere.
